freePBX 2.2.0 is here. Finally!

After a long and drawn out test, beta, and rc cycle, I beleve that we finally have a really REALLY good freePBX release. Since we started on the 2.2 branch, 244 bugs or feature requests have been fixed or implemented. Not only that, we’ve also changed the GUI, added a pile of new features, and also changed the way a few things work. We’re all pretty happy with it, and we’ve have even more new stuff lined up for 2.3. Please note that if you are upgrading, there’s been a couple of significant changes to the way things are done. I’ve highlighted them in bold below, just to make sure everyone reads them.

Important:

There’s been a lot of re-writing of how ‘#’ transfers are done. Including the fact that just pushing ‘#’ won’t work any more. We’ve changed the default Asterisk Transfer to be ‘##’, because it was previously impossible to send a ‘#’ to a remote party – eg, an IVR. This caused no end of headaches, so this has now been changed. So this is an important one – ‘#’ does not work any more, ‘##’ does.

Important: (another one)

We’ve changed the way that some inbound CallerID is handled. If a call comes in with the caller ID of, say, 123 and for some reason gets sent outside the system again (ring groups, follow me), we by default PRESERVE that CallerID. So, when the machine attempts to make a call out, the external person will receive the call (if your outgoing trunk supports it) with the CID of the person who made the call, NOT the CID of the trunk or extension. This is a configurable option, and can be disabled by selecting ‘Never Override Caller ID’ in the trunk that the calls go out on. If that is switched on, it will never send a CallerID that you haven’t explicitly specified somewhere (be it the Trunk CID, or the Extensions CID). Leaving it as standard can also cause problems with some VSP’s that restrict the callerID that you can send, and refuse to process a call if the CID does not match a certain whitelist that they have. This is mentioned in the mouseover in Trunks.

Those are the two important things. Pretty much everything else new should be reasonably self explanitory, but if it’s not, feel free to jump on the IRC channel and ask, and if it’s not documented properly on the User Wiki, feel free to go and document it yourself!

If you’re upgrading an existing freePBX or Trixbox install, it’s very simple:

As simple as that. You then go into the module administrator, upgrade all the modules that need upgrading, check for any updated ones since release (‘Check for updates online’), and then (and only then) click the Red Bar. That’s it. Your freePBX machine is updated, and there was no downtime at all!

The md5sums of the two released packages are:7a988ad70a99c207fa7ddb372f742442 freepbx-2.2.0.tar.gz
ac677ab873fda71a06691f076392c1fa freepbx-2.2.0-withmodules.tar.gz

If you want to do a new install, there’s a pile of walkthroughs for various distributons on the User Documentation Wiki.

(Note to be removed later – I’ve been unable to publish the files to sourceforge for some reason, as they seem to be down, so this is the only place that it’s been announced. Sorry. Will try again tomorrow)